The Ancestor's Tale

The Ancestor's Tale A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

A renowned biologist provides a sweeping chronicle of more than four billion years of life on Earth, shedding new light on evolutionary theory and history, sexual selection, speciation, extinction, and genetics.
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Reviews

Photo of Gavin
Gavin@gl
4 stars
Mar 9, 2023

Loads of lovely examples and vivid analogies. The sidebar on races is surprisingly careful and illuminating - that portion of the phenomenon that's genetic is more straightforward than I’d thought, in my Arts student way. (Though his placid definitiveness about the social interpretation is obvs controversial as hell. He’s a strict philosophical eliminativist, implying that the harm resulting from reifying race totally outweighs all gains from positive discrimination. This is unclear to say the least.) I hadn’t heard of the ‘two-fold cost’ of sex before, super-interesting. Not as snarky as you’d expect, and full of alternative perspectives so long as they’re other evolutionists’ perspectives.

Photo of Nelson Álvarez
Nelson Álvarez @nelsonalva
4 stars
May 10, 2023
Photo of Joe Bauldoff
Joe Bauldoff@bauldoff
5 stars
May 22, 2024
Photo of Erhan Bilici
Erhan Bilici@erhanblc
3 stars
Jun 6, 2023
Photo of David McDonagh
David McDonagh@toastisme
2 stars
Apr 3, 2023
Photo of Laura
Laura@lauragh
4 stars
Nov 1, 2022
Photo of Daniel Lauzon
Daniel Lauzon@daneroo
5 stars
Sep 5, 2022
Photo of Michael Pejin
Michael Pejin@mariachi
4 stars
Aug 30, 2022
Photo of Christopher Wheeler
Christopher Wheeler@woolgatherist
3 stars
Aug 12, 2022
Photo of Lily
Lily@variouslilies
3 stars
Mar 30, 2022
Photo of Gwen Chodur
Gwen Chodur@gwenchodur
3 stars
Dec 23, 2021
Photo of Alyssia
Alyssia@aaaaalyssia
3 stars
Aug 30, 2021

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